Bulletin - Agricultural Experiment Station, North Carolina State University at Raleigh Volume 147-177

North Carolina Station

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 Excerpt: ...usually at least $20 per acre as food for stock. Now it must be a remarkably profitable crop that suc i ceeds such an expenditure of food to make this pay. On the contrary all experiments here and elsewhere have shown that the best way is to cure the peas as hay and to feed them to stock and save all the manure carefully to be returned to the soil. And it has also been proved that fully 75 per cent of the manurial value can be thus saved and that the feeding value can be fully realized in addition and a profit made from the animals fed. The slavish dependence of the Southern farmer on the fertilizer mamifacturer has teen largely brought about by the failure to make the feeding of stock an important part of our work. Stock feeding and the saving of manure lie at the very foundation of all successful agriculture, and the man who supposes that in the long run he can do with commercial fertilizers alone will find that he does it at the expense of the permanent fertility of the soil. The pea, aided by the application of mineral fertilizers, will give us a good deal of the organic matter that we need, but the organic matter and plant-food in the form of barnyard and stable manure-have never yet been fully imitated in chemical matters alone. Where there is no profit in the feeding of stock it is true that we can bury the peas in the soil or feed them off on the ground to hogs and make the soil increasingly fertile, but there are few localities in the South where the feeding of beef or dairy animals cannot be made a profitable part of the farm work. The trouble with many is that they have been brought up to the planting idea and do not care to undertake anything but a cropping, and dislike the constant care and attention that stock feeding demands. Until we get aw...